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BERLIN - Kingfisher Airlines today became a member elect of oneworld(R) after completing a formal membership agreement with the alliance - moving India's leading airline a landmark step towards flying as part of the world's premier airline alliance.

The contract was signed by the Kingfisher Airlines' Chairman and Chief Executive Vijay Mallya and his counterparts from all 12 of oneworld existing partners and members elect. It follows a memorandum of understanding reached between Kingfisher Airlines and oneworld, announced in late February, setting out a framework for membership discussions.

A key condition for oneworld inviting Kingfisher Airlines to join has already been met - with India's Ministry of Civil Aviation granting approval for the carrier to become part of the alliance, just weeks after the airline filed its request for authority to proceed, enabling Kingfisher Airlines and oneworld to move fast forward to complete the formal membership agreement today.

A team of experts from British Airways - which is serving as Kingfisher Airlines' oneworld sponsor, mentoring and supporting it through its joining programme - and from the central oneworld team has just returned from visiting their Kingfisher Airlines counterparts in Mumbai and Delhi to set its joining programme in motion. The first element has already been successfully accomplished with Kingfisher Airlines passing oneworld's safety audit with flying colors.

The next step in building links between oneworld and Kingfisher Airlines takes place next month, with the opening of the new international passenger terminal at New Delhi, when all the alliance's six carriers serving the Indian capital will share Kingfisher Airlines' new premium passenger lounge there.

Meantime, individual members of oneworld have started developing bilateral co-operation with Kingfisher Airlines. British Airways today announced it had reached agreement to code-share with its new Indian partner. The BA prefix will be added to flights by its Indian airline to various points across the Indian sub-continent, with Kingfisher Airlines' IT designator placed on services operated by the UK carrier to key cities in Europe from later this month. Full details will be announced nearer to the launch of these code-share operations.

The addition of Kingfisher Airlines as a oneworld member elect comes in a breakthrough year for the alliance, in terms of both membership consolidation and expanding co-operation between its members airlines, enabling oneworld to build further on its position as the leading quality airline alliance, to expand its unrivalled route network still further and to offer even more services and benefits to customers.

Japan Airlines has been expanding its co-operation with its oneworld partners since reaffirming its membership of the alliance in February, filing days later with American Airlines for anti-trust immunity for a joint business across the Pacific and more than doubling its code-sharing with British Airways.

Kingfisher Airlines' addition to oneworld will link oneworld's unrivalled alliance network with India's most extensive domestic network. It will bring 56 cities onto the oneworld map - all of them in India. This will expand oneworld's global coverage to more than 800 destinations in almost 150 countries, served by a combined fleet of 2,350 aircraft operating some 9,000 flights a day, carrying some 340 million passengers a year.

(eturbonews)